Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 40 ......... Stevenson Place

Now it all depends on how you come across Stevenson Place.

From Little Lever Street, 2016

Enter it from Little Lever Street and you pass through a very narrow entry which on a cold day in late December with the light fading fast could be the prelude to a Dickensian story.

On the other hand were you to pass it from Lever Street it is more than likely it would strike you as an unremarkable courtyard with tall anonymous buildings on either side, coming almost to a dead end with just a narrow passage in the line of two properties.

And like all our lost and forgotten streets there will be stories here and a cursory glance at the maps of the mid 19th century show private dwellings which no doubt will give up their secrets when I plunge into the census returns.

But for now they act as a backdrop to the next bit of the project which is to encourage people to come up with their own nominations for the lost and forgotten streets.

From Lever Street, 2016

Now I have shed loads more but it will be fun to see what others have.

Like Cromford Place which Maureen remembered.

She wondered if I had come across it, which I had but only by trawling the old maps.

It was one of those that went under the Arndale, and was accessed from Market Street or Corporation Street, and Maureen went on to tell me of the cafes and some of the posh places that were three.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Stevenson Place, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

How we shopped on Beech Road in 1969 and thirty years later

First the apology, which is simply I have lost the names of the authors of this shopping survey, but I hope they won’t mind me reproducing.

It was passed to be my Bernard Leech a few years ago, who I hope can supply their names.

But for now, here it is ……… how we shopped on Beech Road in 1969, and 1999.

And today of course a new survey would reveal the massive changes which have seen retailing outlets retreat to be replaced by a mix of bars, cafes, and restaurants with some gift shops and just the odd traditional shop.

Not rocket science, perhaps or even a remarkable set of observations, but still a bit of history.

Location; Chorlton











Picture; shopping survey, Beech Road, 1969 & 1999

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 22 ........... wishing for the coal hole

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family. *

294, 1973

Now we didn’t have a coal hole or coal cellar in 294, nor from memory did we ever have an open fire.

When we moved into the house in the early 1960s, Eltham was about to become a smokeless zone, and while we could have burned specially treated fuel mother put her foot down, arguing she had had enough of coal in the old house, which started our long connection with gas fires and paraffin burning stoves.

Of course, the whole Well Hall estate had been built without cellars, and so coal would have been brought round the back and carried through the garden of 296.

The coal bunker was still there when we moved in, and dad added a big tank for the paraffin which I think was delivered by tanker.

A coal hole, 2018

At the time I shared the wisdom of mother’s decision, but now I rather think it was a mistake, not least because we have open fires which are set and lit from autumn through till the end of spring and are cheaper to run than heating the whole house.

True we do use central heating, but it sits on the lowest setting and just keeps the remainder of the place from becoming “ice station zebra”.

And in line with the city’s regulations on burning coal, we have always used smokeless fuel since we reopened the fire places back in the early 1980s.

Sadly, while we have a coal cellar, I have never won the battle about reinstating it, which I confess only plays to my childhood memories of the coal deliveries.

Enoch Royle and son, circa 1930s

They began with that series of distinctive sounds which started with the crashing noise as a full hundredweight of coal shot from the bag into the cellar, followed by the slower and longer sound of the coal settling, and were accompanied by the smell, which took a few minutes to rise from the cellar but then lingered in the house for hours.

And like then, our coal comes from the coal man, once a fortnight on a large flat backed lorry, which long replaced the horse and cart.

Fireplace, 2016

In that respect, the continuity of coal deliveries was broken for just a few years, between the last of the old coal deliveries and our resumption which I suspect is not the case on the Well Hall Estate.

In the case of our house, the fire places were blocked up in the early 60s and a full thirty years later were still closed.

The previous owner had not only closed them off but built elaborate hardboard facades, omitting to insert ventilation panels which as everyone knows are essential.

Back then I thought these facades were the height of modernity, but now I like our open fires, although in our case the search for replacement fireplaces took us out of south Manchester and into the east and north of the city where these reminders of our Victorian and Edwardian past were still being ripped out, only to be snapped up by residents in Chorlton-m-Hardy, Withington and Didsbury.

Fireplace, 2016

All of which leaves me to wonder what happened to the fireplaces of 294, but that I guess is another story for another time.

And conclude with that obvious observation of the destructive impact of the old coal burning fire places on the environment.

Location; Well Hall and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Well Hall Road, circa 1970, a coal hole, 2018, and reinstated fireplaces, 2014, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, from the Simpson collection, Enoch Royle and father on Albany Road, Chorlton, cum-Hardy circa 1930s, from the Lloyd Collection

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ...nu 68 a rare glimpse of King Street in the 1930s

Most of the images we see of Manchester in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the work of professional photographers. 

They focused on the popular bits and sold them on to the postcard companies.

Then there were the serious amateurs who were often as good as the professionals.

King Street in the 1930s

But there are also the snappers, who captured whatever took their fancy.

Often the images are a little blurred and in many cases have a significance lost in time.

And so with this in mind here is the new series.

Snaps of Manchester is an occasional rummage through pictures most of which were never meant to be shared beyond the family.

Of course the advent of the camera phone has given this a new lease of life.

But for now I am concentrating on old fashioned images and I have my  new facebook chum Sandra to thank for many of these pictures.

Here is King Street before the city planners got rid of the traffic.  Now I don’t have a date for this one but judging from the cars I suspect it will during the 1920s or 30s.

To our right is the old bank which has undergone many conversions and was at one time a music store.

What I like is the way the image captures a quiet day, and while I alluded to dodging cars there is of course little danger of that.

There are few of them and the noise they made would have alerted most people to their passing.

Once we have a date it should be possible to identify some of the shops, particularly those on the left of our photograph.

And with the way these things work there will be someone who can supply a possible date, and others who will remember the shops.

All of which makes for great history.

Now I think I can just remember King Street with cars but like so much of our recent history it is easy to forget the detail.

And that is what makes such snaps all the more useful because they wander off the beaten well trod path and provide us with scenes which the professional did not think as interesting.

Location; Manchester


Picture; King Street circa 1930s from the collection of Sandra Hapgood

Pictures from Beech Road ……… Buonissimo, Muriel and Richard and the bar with lots of names

Now here's a vanished scene, well  almost.

They must date from before 2000, when I swapped smelly photography for digital.

And as you do the last old fashioned photographs were consigned to that very special box, on the equally special shelf, and promptly forgotten for decades.

In the intervening years, Bob and Del rented out the deli to Marcus who retained the name, but then moved on, which is how we now have that fine Spanish tapas bar, while next door Muriel and Richard retired and the last fruit and veg shop became a letting agency.

Nor was that all, because bit by bit Beech Road, slipped effortlessly into a strip of bars, cafés, restaurants and interesting shops.

All of which might well be summed up by the place on the corner with Acres Road, which I remember as a piano shop and and closed for better things.

And without ever wanting to sound like Methuselah I can claim to have eaten there from when it first opened as Café on the Green, and later when it was known variously as Blue Note, the Nose and Marmalade and the Parlour.

And since the Parlour a heap more

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Beech Road; sometime before now, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 21 ........... the unbroken chain

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now I think it will be rare that most of us can track all of the people who lived in a house from its construction to the present day.

But after a heap of research that is what we can do for our house in Well Hall.

The house has been home to thirteen families since it was built in 1915 and I know the names of all but one family.

What is all the more remarkable is that we lived there the longest, from the April of 1964 till 1994.

In that time the five of us grew up and eventually all but one of us left home.

It saw the death of mother, our sister Stella, and finally Dad.

But it was also a happy place and one that even now we all think of as home.

And that bond has been strengthened by a link to the present owners who have kindly taken pictures of the house today.

I have to say there is something odd about looking down on our back garden and seeing that the old tree at the back is still there.

It reminds me of the continuity that stretches far beyond our time at 294 and has made me look again at the stories of all the people who called the place home.

Searching for those stories will prove difficult.  The last census return that can be accessed is 1911 and while there are the electoral rolls and lists of births deaths and marriages these give little away.

So I know next to nothing about Mr and Mrs Nunn who lived there from 1915 until 1919 and only that the Rendles who followed them are buried in Sussex having died in 1946 and ‘54.

Slightly more promising were John and Leah Jarvis who occupied the house from 1929 through to 1947.

He was a “technical chemist", born in 1877 and she was ten year younger who gave her occupation in 1939 as “Unpaid Domestic Duties".

There was a son who may been living in Deptford a year earlier but by 1939 was back in 294.

It is a meagre set of information I grant you but in time there will be more.

I am guessing that Mr Nunn worked at the Royal Arsenal but there is no clue as to the occupation of Mr Rendle or Mr Jarvis.

They may have also worked there but the employment records seem lost.

Now that would be a useful piece of information as it would throw light on how long residents of the estate were linked to the Royal Arsenal.

But what we have is a start.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; us circa 1970, from the Simpson collection

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Outside Beech Road Police Station ........ revealing a little of the life of PC Frederick George Ross

This is Police Constable Frederick George Ross standing with his colleagues outside the police station on Beech Road.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when the picture was taken but one source has suggested 1925.*

And that would have made PC Ross forty-seven years old.

He had joined the city force in 1904 and by  1910 was living on Priory Avenue before moving to Whalley Avenue.

Of the named officers he is the one we know most about and that is as much a bit of luck as it is research.

After all if he had not been recognised and his name added to the picture we would not have been able to discover his story.

But with a name a search of the police employment records and the census returns not only located him but provided me with the name of his wife and daughter and his own place of birth.

PC Ross had married Rebecca Jane Lawson in 1909 in Bolton and their daughter Nora was born the following year.

Like all such stories the detail is even more fascinating for while Nora had been born in Bolton she was registered at the Chorlton office and baptised at St Clements in the May of 1910 which is how we know the family were living at Priory Avenue.

Almost a year later they were on Whalley Avenue and a search of the directories will reveal when they moved from that address.

But that is not quite the end of the story because in the course of doing the research I came across a relative who had posted a series of pictures, one of Frederick and Rebecca and two showing PC Ross during police inspections one of which is dated to 1921.

And according to this source Mrs Ross was in Ireland by 1925 where she died in 1949 followed by her husband fifteen years later.

In time there will be more but for now that is all but it is a lesson in how it is possible to discover a family story.

Nor is that all, because looking at the police records what is interesting is the number of officers who were born in Ireland and Scotland, a trend which goes back beyond 1904 when Chorlton voted to join the city.

Before that date we had been policed by the Lancashire Constabulary who were responsible for building the station in 1885.

Just six years later the officer in charge was a Sergeant Milne from Ireland assisted by two PCs from Scotland and a decade on with  Sergeant Milne there were officers from Ireland and Gloucestershire as well as Lancashire.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; PC Ross, 1875-1963 from Police officers outside Beech Road Police Station circa 1925 from the Lloyd Collection